Tuesday, February 28, 2006

If you revel in the ignorance of bloggers who can barely string two words together this is your man. Read it and understand why his girlfriend left him (see posts 15-35, 44, 56, 77-205, 808-1000, ctd Volumes 2-15 incl). Yawn.

I imagine that the gentleman above isn't too keen on The Kitchen. Never mind, eh?

After all, I'm number 11 in the rankings, so somebody has to be reading my dribblings...

I think that it's magnificent that our great engineering firms are rising to the challenge that the Edinburgh tram system has set them.

Four companies are to battle for a £50m supply and design contract to build future trams for Edinburgh.

French company Alstom and Spain's CAF are up against German-based Siemens and Bombardier Transportation, a German arm of Canadian giant Bombardier.

Oh. Right.

Ian Kendall, Tie's project director, said 11 firms originally indicated interest, with seven bidding for the opportunity to tender.

He said: "This is an important step towards the delivery of a world-class tram system for our capital city.

Of course, another important step would be actually having the cash to build a "world-class tram system".

The proposed tram network has been scaled back with just one line from Leith's Western Harbour to Edinburgh Airport now included in the first phase of construction.

The exciting tram system was, alas, slightly scuppered when Edinburgh residents voted against the congestion charging that was going to pay for the "world-class tram system". This means that only the one line, instead of the three proposed, will be built.

However, as I have pointed out before, Edinburgh Council seem hell-bent on fouling up the roads in the city and, one imagines, we will see the congestion charge mooted again in a couple of years; by which time the artificially induced congestion will be so bad that the charge will go through.

Then, in 100 years time, or so, we will have tramlines galore. Although, I must confess that I am mildly ambivalent about these trams; I don't really see the point in spending at least £193 million (and let's face it, we all know that it's going to end up being far more than that) on putting a system of transport that was ripped up only a few decades ago.

Can anyone tell me why trams are so good? And why they are being installed by the company, majority owned by the City of Edinburgh Council, which also runs the main bus service in the city?

Well, it does seem to be something of a slow news day, so let's have a proper look at this lardy-arsed kids story.

Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, said the target to halt rising obesity in under-11s was "very complex and ambitious".

"The causes of obesity are very varied."

No, they're not. As Dr Crippen wrote some time ago, there is one cause of obesity, and it is very simple.

If you put more fuel, i.e. food, into your body than you consume then your body will convert it to fat and store it. Thus, if you eat more calories than you burn, you will become fat. That's not very difficult, is it?

If you are worried about becoming fat, maybe you should try your humble Devil's diet. I eat a large meal only every three to five days, and merely have a snack—bread and cheese, or maybe a couple of Gregg's steak bakes—at lunchtime on the other days. This is because I sit on my arse all day (occasionally twitching my mouse hand and typing this balderdash) and, working from home, I don't even walk to work anymore. You will find that you soon slip into the routine, and hunger doesn't strike (or if it does, porridge really hits the spot).

It really cuts down on the amount of washing-up that one has to do, too.

Oh, and another thing: if you want children to eat school dinners rather than packed lunches, this also is very simple. Simply ban packed lunches. There, easy. We weren't allowed packed lunches at my prep school, where's the difficulty? So that's that sorted.

Oh, and one more word to the wise: if you want kids to burn more calories, then you could try bringing in at least 2 hours of compulsory sports sessions every day, do away with this school finishing at half past two crap.

Oh, yes, and STOP BUILDING ALL OVER THE PLAYING FIELDS, you fucking tossers.

Jesus fucking Christ, do I have to point out the fucking obvious all the time?

On arguments against ID cards, 50% of people thought that machines to read ID cards would often break or fail to read cards accurately and 55% thought a lot of cards would envitably end up containing false information - though given that some error and mechanical breakdown in any project this size would be enevitable, both these questions depend more on respondents’ definition of “often” and “a lot” than anything else. More importantly, 80% of people think that determined criminals would always find a way of forging the cards, 75% think the cards will be far more expensive than the government says, 60% say their introduction will cause huge inconvenience, 71% think the data on people’s cards will not be secure and will be hacked into, sold on, etc and 61% think the data would be passed on to foreign governments.

So, most people think that the cards will not achieve anything that the government says that they will, and yet 52% of them still support them.

Are people thick or what? I mean, seriously, some people really should be culled; in this case, for the benefit of us all. I mean, even Neil Harding agreed that the cards were a bad idea although, admittedly, he only agreed that this proposed implementation would be bad; he still supports them in theory.

Well, someone has sent me a 130MB Illustrator file which is tying up my other Mac pretty comprehensively at the moment, so your humble Devil has, fuelled by his anger at the stupidity of people who send pointlessly huge files because they cannot be arsed to learn how to use their applications properly and then expect him to pretty much reset the fucking job anyway, decided to turn his malignant attention to Princess Toni's pathetic defence of his piece-of-shit policies.

The title of the piece is pretty much a winner from the start, establishing, as it does, Toni's omnipotence (and thus summing up the silly man's worldview).

I don't destroy liberties, I protect them

See the rampant narcissism in the title? Delicious.

There is a charge, crafted by parts of the right wing and now taken up by parts of the left, that New Labour is authoritarian, in particular, that I am.

So, you admit that the entire political spectrum is united in thinking that you are a fascist sucker of Satan's cock? A brave move indeed, Prime Minister.

We are intent on savaging British liberties, locking up those who dissent and we abhor parliamentary or other accountability.

Yup, that's pretty much the substance of the allegations. I would also add that we think that you are a liar, an incompetant and probably a mendacious little shit as well.

The reason right wingers are keen on this is clear. New Labour has eschewed traditional forms of leftist statism.

No, you haven't. NuLabour's policies are all about state control; they may well use some previously unthought of ways of achieving that control, but nevertheless, that is what it is. The Chancellor, for instance, acts precisely like a traditional tax-and-spend socialist fool.

NuLabour are a traditional socialist, statist Labour government; all that they have done is to paint a (very thin) veneer of conservatism onto the facade in order to make them electable. That veneer is mainly personified as Tony Blair.

This is the only reason that Princess Toni is still in charge: because, without him, NuLabour lose their acceptable-to-the-middle-classes veneer and become simply Old Labour. And the Labour Party are more wedded to power than principle.

So the type of claim they used to make about the Attlee or Wilson governments they can't plausibly make about us.

Well, I can, you self-obsessed bastard.

Have we become indifferent to liberty? At one level, the charge is easy to debunk.

On ye go, then. Is a debunking forthcoming?

But on another level, there is a serious debate about the nature of liberty in the modern world. I accept the good faith of our critics. I just believe them to be profoundly mistaken.

Ah, right; no debunking, then. No, I can already see that what Toni is going to do here is to shift the goalposts: he is going to debunk the allegations as relating to his definition of "liberty".

But first, the true record.

Brace yourself, chaps: here come the lies...

This government has introduced the Human Rights Act, so that, for the first time, a citizen can challenge the power of the state solely on the basis of an infringement of human rights...

I'm waiting for that test case, Toni. Oh, and are the people on those alleged torture rendition flights, that you haven't asked President Bush about, allowed to bring you to court under the Human Rights Act. Furthermore, as relates to that, let's have a look at Strange Stuff's recent Mill post on social rights, shall we?

John Stuart Mill does not have a very high regard to "social rights", and yes the scare quotes are in the original.

"A theory of "social rights," the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language—being nothing short of this—that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever"

It is not for the government to grant us "human rights"; how would this be possible since the government works for us, the citizens who elected them. The only way in which the government can possibly grant "human rights" is if the government sees itself as being effectively above not only its citizens, but also of all humans. Since this demonstrably cannot be true, then the government is either deluding us, or itself. Or, of course, both.

... and the Freedom of Information Act, the most open thing any British government has done since the Reform Acts of the 1830s.

As regular readers of Private Eye will know, the FoI is merely window-dressing. Since any request can be effectively blocked, either on grounds of "commercial sensitivity" or because a minister decides that there may be "issues of national security", the FoI merely ensures that we see precisely what the government wishes us to see. The only difference is that there is the illusion of transparency and people-power, and thus imbues a new credibility to the figures that the government releases. Any time that you see any figures or studies that are reported to have "been released under the Freedom of Information Act", you should treat those figures with a double dose of salt.

And, of course, once the charges for requests come in we'll see the number of requests drop real fast. And, naturally, those requests that are still made will, effectively, constitute another indirect tax, thus making The Gobblin' King* extra-specially happy. Anyway, my hatred and contempt for our Cyclopean Chancellor leads me to digress...

We have devolved more power than any government since the 1707 Act of Union...

Yes, and it's been a fuck-up. Power was devolved to Labour heartlands in the anticipation of being able to keep control of those areas. The sop to the petty parochialism of our Celtic cousins has simply increased the demands for an "English Parliament" which will, naturally not happen; after all, lest we forget, Labour polled 800,000 fewer votes in England than the Tories.

The vast waste of money that is the Scottish Parliament building has been a long and drawn-out embarrassment, and the details of the incompetence of those involved in the contract has merely served to spotlight the lack of real-world experience of most civil servants.

Furthermore, like many other things—such as reform of the House of Lords—the project remains unfinished, with the West Lothian question continuing to be unresolved. Once more, of course, this is about power for, were the Scottish MPs unable to vote on English matters, Toni would never win a vote again.

... introduced transparency into political funding...

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. The Register of Members' Interests seems to be ignored, at best, by many people—not least David Blunkett—and openly scorned by others (not least Toni himself, whose declaration of his freebies remains patchy at best).

... and restricted the Prime Minister's right to nominate to the House of Lords.

Well, whoopee do. That doesn't alter the fact that NuLabour enobled more people in their first 7 years of government than the Tories did from 1979 till they were toppled in 1997.

In other words, I have given away more prime ministerial power than any predecessor for more than 100 years.

Well, possibly. However, you have taken more on than any Prime Minister in history: the 12 point Terrorism Plan was announced whilst the Home Secretary was on holiday and originated from you. Your grandstanding on the Foreign Stage has emasculated the series of increasingly loathesome Foreign Secretaries, and your personal control of almost every policy proposal made by the government is evident in the irritating incompetence inherent in every one.

As for parliament, I have spent proportionately more time answering questions than any predecessor...

Well, that's not entirely true, is it? You have reduced the frequency of PMQs and, more importantly, insisted that all questions be tabled beforehand so that plausible answers—for which read "spin" and "excuses"—can be concocted before the televised "debate".

... given more statements...

None of which anyone believes.

... am the only PM ever to agree to appear before the select committee chairs...

Well, given your presidential style of involvement in government and, more importantly, the fact that you were personally responsible for the Kelly suicide, you didn't really have much choice. Besides, you lied to the committee anyway.

... the only one to give monthly press conferences.

Part of the sweetening deal with the press. The MSM do love being told what they are to report: it saves time and money which could be more profitably spent down the pub.

And I gave a vote specifically on whether to go to war.

Becuase the entire House threatened to revolt had you not. Furthermore, you and the egregious Campbell then conspired to lie, cheat and deceive the House in order to ensure that you won that vote, you fucking little prick.

What about the charge that ID cards and anti-terrorism legislation transgress basic liberties and are, as David Cameron put it, 'unBritish'?

Entirely valid, frankly.

Here, we must put a new case about liberty in the modern world.

Watch, watch, children! Watch while I shift those goalposts! Jesus, I hate you, you fuck.

I am from the generation that I would characterise, crudely, as hard on behaviour, but soft on lifestyle, i.e. I support tough measures on crime but am totally pro gay rights.

Until someone tells you otherwise, I assume. And, as with Harding, is there something about your sexual predilections that you'd like to confide in us? My father said that that lawyer who related that "everybody knows that Blair has a fancy-boy in the West End" was apparently awfully convincing...

Besides, if your stance on gay rights is, seriously, the only thing that you can hold up as being liberal, then you haven't got an awful lot to boast about really. I mean, compared to the ASBOs, the proposals to evict homeowners from their property and sent them to training camps, the idea of using satellites to check whether people have added conservatories, the imprisonment without trial of suspected terrorists, the proposals for house arrest orders, the Regulatory Reform Bill and the cock-sucking, boy-mess stained, bastard, fucking ID Cards giving gays the legal right to bum each other at 16—and let's face it, the age of consent laws are hardly strictly policed anyway—is not much to crow about, actually. You fucking knobber.

I believe in live and let live, except where your behaviour harms the freedom of others. A society with rules but without prejudices is how I might sum it up.

That's right, 'cos you're a pretty straight guy, huh? No, you see, what you meant is "where you beaviour harms others"; no "freedom" thank you. Who defines freedom anyway? So, shall we just stick to "harms others", thank you so much.

But the 'rules' are becoming harder to enforce. Antisocial behaviour isn't susceptible to normal court process.

Yes, it is. There were already plenty of laws governing anti-social behaviour; they just weren't enforced. You see, Toni, it doesn't matter how many new laws you introduce, because if you don't police them properly then they are just as useless as the existing laws. You are a lawyer, you should know this. On the other hand, you could talk to frontline bobbies rather than that knobhead namesake of yours. By the way, why has he still got a job? Is he sucking your nuts or what?

Modern organised crime is really ugly, with groups, often from overseas, frequently prepared to use horrific violence.

And, though I get into constant trouble for saying it, while I completely condemn IRA terrorism, I believe it was different in nature and scale from the new global Islamic terrorism we face.

The fact that you get into constant trouble for saying it might, just possibly, give you an inkling that you are wrong, you fucker. The IRA detonated bombs with alarming regularity, in London and Warrington, Armagh and Belfast. OK, so their main aim, on the mainland at least, was the destruction of property and the spread of fear and panic... Oh, hang on... For fuck's sake, Tonio, my little poppet, they managed to kill a lot of people (and now you've let the murderers into government).

For me, this is not an issue of liberty but of modernity.

Well, thank you so much, Toni, for this wonderful, modern world that you have bequeathed to us. Cheers, you cock-knocker.

If we fail to tackle ASB because the court system is inadequate, other people's liberties suffer. If we don't take head-on organised criminals or terrorists, others are harmed. The question is not one of individual liberty vs the state but of which approach best guarantees most liberty for the largest number of people.

Actually, Tone, it is precisely the question of individual liberty versus the state; that is exactly what we are all banging on about. Once more, you are dodging the question by redefining the question; we are none of us fooled, you twat. We can spot it a mile off. Now answer the question that we are asking, you fuck.

In theory, traditional court processes and attitudes to civil liberties could work. But the modern world is different from the world for which these court processes were designed.

Sorry, how? Has man undergone some fundamental evolutionery biological change? No. Do we have to legislate for burglars with three arms? No.

It is a world of vast migration, most of it beneficial but with dangerous threats. We have unparalleled prosperity, but also the break-up of traditional community and family ties and the emergence of behaviour that was rare 50 years ago.

Oh, fuck off. That has been happening ever since easy and cheap travel was invented. In the latter decades of the 1800s, something like 23 million emmigrants fucked off from these desolate shores to "the land of the free". This has been happening for over a century!

Actually, of course, we all know what has been causing this ASB that you keep banging on about. It is the Welfare State, that massive, monolithic edifice which you and your cocking Chancellor are doing so much to expand. It is the Welfare State that discourages forethought, and thus reduces man to the role of primitives, of beasts. If you socially engineer primitives, unworldly, pusillanimous, unthinking savages then you really cannot be surprised when they go about beating each other with clubs (or, of course, the ubiquitous iron bar).

God, you really are a massive penis.

Organised crime operates to incredible levels of sophistication.

Yup, and they will crack these not-very-incredible levels of security on your preventative measures. So we are all fucked.

Organisations that support terrorism take enormous care to avoid infringing the strict letter of the law.

I really cannot believe that we wouldn't be able to pin anything on them. I mean, seriously? They got Capone for tax fraud, you know. Come on, Tony, be creative.

Last August, I named Hizb ut-Tahrir as such an organisation. Within days, its website changed, putting out a very moderate message, and I was lambasted for trying to curb free speech. But this is an organisation which has been banned in Germany and Denmark: it is active on campuses where it promotes its extremist message.

Oh, well done, my Saviour. Will you now declare Gorgeous George such an organisation, because I'm fed up of his pontificating, especially on things such as how those cartoons were worse than 9/11 (seriously, can someone please have that man killed? He's becoming an embarrassment. Any Weegies out there feel so ashamed that they want to do him over with a hammer, at all?).

People should be prevented from glorifying terrorism. You can say it is a breach of the right to free speech but in the real world, people get hurt when organisations encourage hatred.

Uh, Tony? We... er... we already had laws against inciting violence. You could have had the loony of Finsbury Mosque under those laws years ago, if you'd wanted to. There is a world of difference between saying, "Feck me, the 'Rah are grand. Didja see that last bomb? What a feckin' foire that was. And that last knee-capping, feckin' magic" (you let them into government, Toni, you cunt) and saying "That 9/11 was a glorious deed. Go forth now, and do something not disimilar. And don't forget to buy you branded Finsbury Mosque rucksacks at the gift shop on your way out. Allah is great! Don't forget the nails!"

Y'see. One is glorifying terrorism (and probably about to have his face shot off by Loyalists) and the other is glorifying terrorism and also inciting violence. Do you see? Actually, given the whole Nick Griffin shebang, I imagine that you probably don't see the difference at all. Because you are a strategically-shaved monkey with the brain of a 3-week old banana. You bastard cunt.

We expect similar objections when the Serious Organised Crime Agency starts fully on 1 April with extensive powers to make it difficult for criminals to do business. But without these powers, the agency and police face an uphill task.

To be honest, that's probably a good thing. Otherwise they get carried away and get the wrong guy. And hold him for... oh... 28 days without charge. If he's lucky.

On ID cards, there is a host of arguments, irrespective of security, why their time has come.

Yes... Oh, sorry, I thought that you were going to make some of those arguments, but you aren't, are you? Every argument that you and your merry men have made for ID Cards has been exploded; the argument that ID Cards will prevent terrorism was exploded by your own damn Home Secretary. They didn't stop terrorism in Spain, for fuck's sake! And not just that once, over a period of years: heard of ETA, have you?

As for the fraud stuff, what a load of cock. Firstly, the documents which you will use to gain an ID card will be easily forgeable. Secondly, the damn database just simply won't work because it's too fucking huge. Thirdly, the fucking retina-scanning technology won't work. I mean, finger-printing is fucking hundreds of years old, and we can't even get that right; been following that policewoman's case up here, have you? It's been causing something of a disturbance throughout the entire Scottish judicial system. You might want to get a briefing...

Most people already have a range of different cards, for workplace, bank or leisure.

Yes, Toni, but we choose to have those. Do you see? And also they don't have every detail of our fucking lives attached to them, you worthless, fucking knob. Can you see the fucking difference yet? Can you? Can you fucking see it, you fascist cunt?

And, contrary to what is said, it will not be an offence not to carry one.

Like Mr Eugenides, I just straight out don't believe this at all. After all, if that were the case, then what would be the fucking point of having them, eh? Think is, Tonio, we just don't believe a single, solitary syllable that passes your lips. This is, I think, mainly because you are a PROVEN CUNTING LIAR, YOU CUNTING CUNTWIPE.

Finally, back to politics. The worry some people have is that the Tories have joined with the Lib Dems and that we are therefore on the wrong side of the debate. I would answer: have confidence in our position.

Why? Everything you've touched, you have utterly arsed up. You couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery. Plus, your wife looks like the picture of Dorian Gray.

That last bit wasn't relevant. I just felt that I had to say it.

If I were the Tories, the one area where I would stick with a traditional line is law and order. That they find themselves in a strange place explains why the Tories may ape the Lib Dems on this issue in parliament but talk tough to the electorate.

Or, just maybe, they feel that the ID Cards are utterly fucking wrong. Aaaaaaaaaaargh. You are such a CUNT.

Their attitude to liberty does indicate, though, a refusal to understand the modern world. If the nature of the threat changes, so should our policies. That is not destroying our liberties, but protecting them.

I fucking well despair, I really do. Please, go drown yourself in a shallow pool of Leo's piss. Or take an overdose of heroine. Or get Mark Oaten to bugger you to death. I don't mind, just do it soon; you are a total waste of matter and a drain on our oxygen. Please, go home and die.

Many people have pointed out that this article is a load of old shit, of course; thus, it was inevitable that the loony, Labour mouthpiece that is Neil Harding would leap to his bum-chum's defence, with a post entitled:

PM defends his record on civil liberties and so do I.

Unbelievable. The thing is, also, that Neil is utterly unable to drag himself away from party politics. I think that this may be because he has no imagination. He certainly has no judgement.

So the first thing to acknowledge is that, if new Labour are authoritarian, so too are the opposition parties.

Why is this relevant? My bogies taste better than anybody else's thus eating my bogies—despite the fact that they are formed from mucous, particulates, pollutants, bacteria, viruses and dirt and are, essentially, the outside dustbin of the body—is a good thing. What a knobber.

Voting against Labour because of their civil liberties record, would be like voting for the Tories (who support the Iraq War even more) to register disapproval of the War.

The Tories "support the Iraq War even more"? More than whom, Labour? Do they? The Tories, who, presumably, were presented with the same "sexed-up" dossier (or, as I like to call it, that massive report full of even bigger lies) as everybody else and therefore voted for the war because they believed that it was necessary, apparently still support the Iraq War even more than Tony and his team.

You heard it here first, folks.

The trouble with Neil is that every single word that he writes is like a party political broadcast on behalf of the NuLabour Party.

One of the main arguments used against this government by the obsessive absolutist libertarians who run Liberty Central, is that, it is not that this government is necessarily going to abuse these new powers, but that some future government might. The major flaw in this argument is of course that, if such a government did get power, the last thing we would have to worry about would be what was currently on the statute book, but what they would add to it.

Neil, my poppet, in case you hadn't realised, in my opinion this is that future government and they are already abusing their powers. I mean, as an example, first they "sexed-up" a dossier on Iraq's military capability, then they threaten the supposedly impartial BBC and trigger resignations left, right and centre, and then they admit that they might have spiced-up the intelligence but they are bollocksed if they are going to resign or apologise, and then they continue to hold the "impartial" broadcaster by the balls until such time as they can control it completely the enquiry into the License Fee Charter is concluded. I think that you'll find that I have justified the word fascist as applied to this government and, indeed, others have joined me in this.

Neil then, in a brilliant impression of His Master, dodges all the liberties questions and commences droning on about PR and FPTP. It's not very interesting, although he does manage to get his long word in there—"reactionary", as applied to all Tories, naturally—which I think is very nice. He is a pillock.

I diskard him.

However, he does like Our Glorious Leader very much, which is sweet. It is unknown whether or not Blair likes Neil, but I would imagine that the two of them would get on like a house on fire.

In fact, they could test out some of Tony's gay laws together.

And while they are doing that, we can set their house on fire...

UPDATE:The Reptile has a nice, concise post on this, making many of the same points that I have. Only less long-windedly and with fewer "cunts".

* Google on "gobblin king". Oh, and the "I'm feeling lucky!" search takes one straight to the Gobblin King's lair...

Monday, February 27, 2006

MUSLIMS living in the UK must accept that British values include a commitment to freedom of speech, even if that means offending people, says the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality.

Speaking in the wake of worldwide demonstrations against cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, Sir Trevor Phillips said that the right to offend was an "absolutely precious" part of British identity, which could not be bargained away. And he suggested that any Muslims who want to live under a system of Shariah law should leave the country.

However, given that I am a nationalistic, racist fascist, this can only mean that Sir Trevor Phillips is too; this news will, I would imagine, come as something of a shock to the man. Poor Trev.

Sir Trevor rejected the idea that British Muslims should be allowed to live under Shariah law in their own communities. "I don't think that's conceivable," he said. "We have one set of laws. They are decided on by one group of people, members of parliament, and that's the end of the story. Anybody who lives here has to accept that's the way we do it. If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else."

Well, yes; which is what I have said numerous times before. Sharia is entirely incompatible with our laws and, indeed, our sense of decency. It is unthinkable that people should be allowed to practise it in this country: where would it end?

We would end up with druidic nutters sacrificing virgins on altars at Stonehenge. Of course, this could also be made to segue nicely into the sharia joy of honour killings...

On the other hand, of course, we may also end up with lunatic goat-fuckers being forced to marry the object of their attentions which—whilst being unfortunate for the poor goat, which would be forced into a life of sexually violation by a desperate weirdo—would be absolutely fucking hilarious on many other levels...

Meanwhile, back in Glasgow, the Comrades had become downhearted. One of them claimed to have read the Black Book of Communism, but when I challenged him on this he turned quite sheepish for he was unable to tell me whether the book had "around 200 pages" or "around 1,000 pages". That damned capitalist logic. So unfair, isn't it? The demoralised duo started to pack up their wares and didn't seem too happy when I suggested continuing the discussion on my next visit to Red Clydeside.

There have been "riots" in the Afghan Prison in which Jack Idema and his guys are being (illegally) detained. It seems that a number of Taliban prisoners have taken over parts of the prison and are holding hostages.

Rottie has the full low-down, with the first part being here and the later, more serious, update is here.

In summary, it seems less like a riot and more like a full-on revolt and things are serious enough that Jack and others have been issued with weapons for their own safety. There are Northern Alliance troops in the prison, having stormed it a couple of days ago.

If you want. It's up to you; they aren't going to force you or anything. Your humble Devil has signed up and, although my knowledge of specifics is pretty darn basic, we shall see if I can't concoct a reasonably toned article for it at some point.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Sorry for the brief hiatus in blogging; I'm trying to find my bile as it seems to have dissipated slightly. I do really want to address Princess Toni's article, even if everybody else will already have done so.

Thanks to my contributors who, by chance, seemed to have weighed in at exactly the right time, thus ensuring that it looks like the lights are still on. I shall resume when I have found some more anger.

Charlie Whitaker at perfect points out that democracy in the UK should be understood in terms of accountability:

A free society can choose to grant its leadership extensive power - as long as it retains the right of informed democratic oversight. The powers the prime minister describes are not his to take or to give away. They belong to the nation. [...]

Last week its Mayor was removed from office for a month by an unelected quango created by, uh, New Labour. The Lord giveth with one hand: but what is he doing with the other? We don’t see until our new ‘freedoms’ are removed with a sudden swipe.

He is, of course, talking about the looming threat of the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, whose name is an exercise in keeping the content and purpose of legislation out the sight of casual public enquiry.

This particular 'reform' allows.. well.. how to put this without sounding alarmist.. it allows a sitting government to rewrite almost any Act, and enact a few more besides without Parliamentary approval. Not my words, so much as the words of six professors from Cambridge's Faculty of Law.

The restrictions on this Act seem to be of the loosest, most easily circumvented kind: that measures be 'proportionate' to policy objective, strike a fair public interest balance and do not impinge upon a freedom a person might otherwise reasonably expect to continue to exercise - which all sounds good until you realise who gets to decide what that means, and when those criteria have been fulfilled. This briefing note (pdf, link via perfect.co.uk) points out that the bill doesn't require that these criteria are met - only that Ministers consider they have been met, where relevant.

Under such a law, acountability becomes reduced to a four-yearly exercise in hope - hope that you'll be able to vote someone else into power, and hope that they'll act to reverse decisions taken outside of parliament and resist using the powers themselves. It is, quite simply, an invitation for idiots to behave like dictators.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

This morning, the 'Daily Telegraph' has reported that the duke is evicting a group of allotment-holders in Prudhoe, Northumberland, whose potato patches stand in the way of a shopping centre.

It is unlikely that historians of the future will study the Northumberland Clearances in the same way they record the Highland Clearances effected by the first Duke of Sutherland, the two situations varying wildly in both fact and degree. Prudhoe is certainly no Strathnaver, but at bottom, when it comes to motives for putting people off the land then, as a wise manonce noted, over time nothing really changes except the uniforms and the transportation.

200 years ago the Heilanders were moved out to make way for the Great Cheviot Sheep, now Prudhoe's turnip growers are getting turfed out in favour of GAP. It's all about 'progress' and 'improvement', don't you know; you've always got to make the most efficient use of resources and all that, and after all can't you do what you like with your own property?

Of course you can. There is no way on Earth that horticultural cranks lovingly tending their rhubarb, making things come alive and grow whilst maintaining their peoples' ancient connection to the land, can compete with the rent you can make from owning 2,000 square feet's worth of Asda.

The duke has certainly offered to make an 'alternative location' available to allotment-holders; and it is to be hoped that if his offer is taken up then the gardeners will find their new plots as productive as the old.

Friday, February 24, 2006

I'm afraid that the time has come to rip Neil Harding a new arsehole. However, to correct his multifarious idiocies is going to take time, patience, booze and a massive amount of raw bile.

Alas, buggering off, as I am this evening, to a party in some god-forsaken cave somewhere near Rosslyn, is not going to allow me the required time in which to prepare this cornucopia of wrath, so I am going to save it.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

For fucks sake you stupid software! Apologies all, the applet I'm using to make posts for Not Little England keeps forgetting that that's my default blog, despite being set that way. Hence, for the third time in two days, something I've written for there ended up, briefly, here.

My posts there have nowhere near enough swearing for this place. Oh yeah, welcome aboard Mr Judas, keep up the good work...

As a preamble, a trailer if you will, let me clarify a couple of things; yes, I am a monarchist, if only because they, really, do no harm and, frankly, the alternative is too awful to contemplate. However, this article makes me cross, partly because Rowat is such a smug twat and partly because, whatever his faults, I believe Charles to be a basically decent man.

So, having dealt with that, let's get on with the main feature: putting the boot into Alison.

MOVE over Mandela. Take a number Solzhenitsyn. Get back Aung San Suu Kyi. Pray silence and be humble for Citizen Windsor, "Wolfie" to his friends, the leader of the Highgrove Popular Front and Britain's premier dissident. Yes, really. Just when you thought Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize had killed satire stone dead, up pops Prince Charles to give it the kiss of life.

Ah, we've found Alison's hook: calling Charles "Wolfie". Really, already we can see that the woman's wit knows no bounds.

Not that the Che Guevara of organic farming meant to do it.

I think that comparing the heir to the throne, whose greatest folly was to carry on an affair with another man's wife (hardly a phenomenon unknown amongst journalists), with a child-killing, Communist mass-murderer is, frankly, more than a little rude. Personally I'd consider it actionable, but then maybe I'm being a little sensitive.

However, it is a useful little sentence that, since it allows us to gauge the tone in which the rest of Ms. Rowat's article will continue.

He never does. The heir to the throne reportedly thought long and hard before going to the High Court in London to stop the Mail on Sunday publishing further extracts from his journals.

I suppose that it is only me who thinks that the idea that someone should have to go to court in order to stop a newspaper publishing their private writings is, frankly, a little unpleasant? Ah, well, I suppose that one could plead public interest.

But, having been embarrassed by the initial airing of his thoughts on the Hong Kong hand-over ceremony, in which he called Chinese officials "appalling old waxworks", it was imperative that Wolfie Windsor try to plug the leak.

Only, how was publishing the private thoughts of the heir to the throne—in which he denigrates the leaders of a country with whom we wish to trade and thus enrich our public, i.e. the people—actually in the public interest? Surely, in terms of frosty relations, it has, in fact, damaged the public interest?

Little did he know that while he stood on one side of the dyke with his finger in the hole, his former aide was on the other with several sticks of dynamite.

With his claim that Charles sees himself as a "dissident" working against the prevailing political consensus, Mark Bolland, once the prince's spin doctor, has become his newest nightmare. Bolland's witness statement has not, for now, had quite the same impact as Diana's Panorama interview or Andrew Morton's book. In time, however, the gushing aide could do more harm to the prince's chances of succeeding the throne than the ex-wife ever did.

Which just goes to show that you cannot trust a spin doctor. What happened to pride in one's discretion; why is it that we must be constantly barraged by the "confessions" of mediocrities looking for their few minutes of tainted fame and their bundles of shit-stained money? Let me tell you, I would choose Neil Harding as an associate over scum like Bolland, and those are strong words indeed.

There is always a temptation with Charles to give him the benefit of the doubt. He seems a decent enough cove, doing good works through the Prince's Trust and all that. Many of his opinions would probably find favour with a lot of people. He thinks the Iraq war has been bad for relations with the Muslim community. Check. He is worried about climate change. Check. He is against genetically modified foods. Check. He likes a nice bit of classical architecture. Check. His other views, on hunting and the Human Rights Act, are more or less savoury depending on your politics. With Wolfie Windsor, you pays your money through the tax breaks on his £505m Duchy of Cornwall estate, and you takes your pick of his opinions.

Well, yes, Alison; but how, exactly, is paying for the tax breaks on the Duchy of Cornwall in any way different to the tax breaks and expenses that MPs and Ministers get on their grace and favour appartments, travel, staff expenses and Council Tax (yes, John Prescott, I'm looking at you)? Oh yes, there is a massive difference, isn't there? With Charles "you takes your pick of his opinions", whereas with our "elected" representitives one has their opinions forced upon one.

So, on the one hand, we have Charles Windsor, who runs a business (the Duchy) profitably and thus benefits his tenants, gets no more tax breaks than, say, Richard Branson or Rupert Murdoch, and who donates much of his income to giving impoverished people a chance to indulge in activities that they would never be able to otherwise. This man thinks that some things are wrong in the country, and writes to MPs to complain about such things.

And on the other? Well, we have many thousands of MPs, MSPs, Welsh Assembly members, local councillors and assorted hangers on, every single one of whom is financially entirely parasitic on those of us who work and, indeed, whose main job seems to be to extract money from us. These people, in turn, force their opinions on the rest of us through laws, bans and fines.

I am aware that I have thrown up something of a straw man there but bear with me. It has relevance.

In expressing his views, Charles is only doing what thousands of his fellow countrymen and women do every day. We live in the have-your-say age in which anyone with an opinion is encouraged to phone Five Live, write to their MP, start a campaign.

If only they did, Alison, if only they did. When did you last write to your MP? Have you ever, in fact, disagreed with your MP, or felt moved to write a disgusted letter to him (or her)?

Facts remain sacred (for the moment) but comment is free and we are all entitled to throw in our tuppence worth. It's freedom of speech, innit? It's our right.

Facts remain pretty fucking sacred in the MSM as well, you smug cow; every day, bloggers all over the world point out the errors, obfuscation and downright lies published in the dead tree media, and yet the waste of space that is the fourth estate sails blithely on, ignoring the repeated, indignant cries of those who know the truth and who object to the peddling of inflammatory lies to the general populace.

And we might still have the right to free speech if the MSM had campaigned a little harder when Toni was bringing in his illiberal measures to curb this right. In fact, if more people had written to their MPs, Alison, then we might, indeed, still have the right to free speech. You smug bitch.

Wolfie Windsor, as far as we know, did not phone Five Live. He put his thoughts down in letters and in journals and sent them to friends, politicians, media people, journalists, actors and acquaintances.

Is it any different to haranguing people in the pub? Oh, I know that letters are out of fashion these days, but the Prince is of a generation who wrote letters rather than thumbing txt mssgs to their mates, or published their thoughts on LiveJournal.

It has been known for years that Charles was a serial memo writer. When his partiality towards green ink first surfaced in 2002, Tony Blair gritted his teeth and called the notes "helpful and informative".

Toni lied through his teeth; so what's new? The fact that we would all be a lot better off if he had listened to some of the advice is, naturally, not to be borne.

What other recipients think of them is less clear. Perhaps they regard his missives like those ghastly round-robin Christmas letters. Some people bore you to death by banging on about little Bobby's swimming badges or Aunty May's fibroids, Wolfie likes to discuss the Dalai Lama. Where's the harm in that?

And some people, of course, like to write massively smug, ill-informed horse-shit in local broadsheets, whoring their opinions for cash. Don't they, Alison?

Where does one start? The stupidity of it is as good a place as any. According to the prince's legal team, the journals, sent out to between 75 and 100 people, are private and confidential. In the 30 years he has been writing them, the court was told, it has never been Charles's intention or wish to publish them. Even by the standards of the royal household this is astonishing naivety. While the prince was not selling the journals and therefore cannot be said in the strict sense of the word to have been "publishing" them, he was circulating the contents.

Perhaps he sent them to friends that he trusted, those who would treat them as the private missives that they so patently are. Perhaps the people that he sent them to are the kind of people that I cited earlier: you now, the kind who still understand the words "honour", "dignity" and "discression". Not words that will be in any way familiar to any journalist, let alone a parochial, pusillanimous bitch writing op. ed. pieces in a Scottish newspaper.

In doing so, he was taking the risk that those contents would one day be disclosed. What is amazing is how long it took for that to happen. The prince must be blessed with supremely loyal friends and, with a few obvious exceptions, fiercely protective staff.

See above, Alison. Let me repeat those words: "honour", "dignity", "discression". Oh, and you are right; we can, indeed, add "loyalty" to that list.

The sovereign, as Bagehot put it, has three rights: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. In other words, the monarch is supposed to play a passive role, in private, and defer to the will of the people's elected representatives.

As, indeed, in public, Charles does. One could treat his prognostications against GM crops, etc. as warnings. He has, after all, no power to make, remake, edit or otherwise interfere with government policy (would that he did. We might have nicer-looking buildings for starters).

The system works because it suits all sides, not least the monarchy itself. Governments come and go. By not rocking the boat with any particular political party, the monarchy is allowed to sail on regardless of which lot are in power.

In turn, the UK benefits by having a consistent Head of State (and point of contact which is, as anyone in marketing or management could tell you, a very good thing).

Charles is not yet king, but he has already made public his views on a wide range of controversial matters. In doing so he has challenged government policy and, arguably, frustrated its implementation.

Do we really think that Blair, with his still large majority, has ever changed policy because of Charles's missives? I doubt it myself. After all, he didn't change it when hundreds of thousands of those who elected him and his fascist colleagues to power, when hundreds of thousands of those whom he and his cronies are supposed to be representatives of, marched against his intended policy; why should one middle-aged man with less actual power than your average voter seed doubt in his mind?

Will he be satisfied with the right to be consulted, to encourage, to warn, or will he exercise a right to reply?

It is difficult to exercise the "right to encourage" or the "right to warn" if one is not allowed to speak back to one's interloquator.

Charles, if he is half the operator he thinks he is, needs to wise up to some political and personal truths. His views may be average but he is not the average citizen. What he says ought not to matter but, as the heir to the throne, it does. If he wants his views to remain private he should not circulate them in samizdat form to dozens of people. Above all, he cannot use the media for his own ends one day and the next day try to gag it.

Ah, yes. Well, he didn't did he? I am sure that his official pronouncements are sent out as official press releases as is customary; his private correspondance should remain private. Whether he sends it to one person or ten thousand, that does not alter the fact that it is still private. I am sure that Ms. Rowat, who uses the media to her own ends (accpeting money in return for airing her fatuous opinions), won't mind the Herald publishing any letters that she has sent to her friends or, indeed, her private diaries.

I look forward to her column being filled with her personal revelations about her employers, her problems with period pains, and her personal opinions on Sam from next door. The hypocritical old sow.

If HRH really wants to play at politics he should throw himself on the mercy of parliament, beg them to strip him of his position and stand for election. I hear there are some vacancies coming up at Holyrood next year.

Oh, come, come, Alison; if he were going to stand for Parliament then I am sure that he would stand for the Mother of all Parliaments rather than some jumped-up County Council bun-fight arena.

But, then, that would not be Charles's way. Far better to have a discreet moan to your chums in high places or confess all to a diary like some superannuated Adrian Mole, than stand up and be counted like a commoner.

Have any of you spotted Alison's breath-taking hypocrisy yet? That's right: she is playing politics as much as Charles is. She is, in fact, informing opinion through her useless column. Admittedly she might have less impact, mainly because I shouldn't imagine that many people read her tripe, but nevertheless her offence is precisely the same as that of the Prince.

So, when will we see Alison Rowat standing for Parliament? I believe, Alison, that there are some vacancies coming up at Holyrood next year.

Oh, and if you don't get elected, will you do us all a favour and shut your fucking mouth...?

Just the briefest of notes to serve as an introduction for the new spit boy here at The Kitchen and a litte reminder: although much of the vitriol bubbling constantly out of our beloved Devil's every orifice is targetted at the violence inherent in certain religious practises or beliefs (more, much more, on this in the coming months from yours truly I fear), it does not require blind faith in a higher power or two-thousand odd years of mutual antipathy to produce such a repugnant spectacle of hate. In fact seemingly all you need is a shirt from JJB sports and a brain the size of my fist.

Supporters surrounded the vehicle while throwing missiles and shouting "Munich scum" in reference to the plane crash that killed 23 people, including eight Manchester United players, in 1958.

Bottles, beer glasses and stones were hurled as the ambulance became stuck in heavy traffic after Saturday's FA Cup tie. Witnesses also claim the ambulance was rocked as some Liverpool followers tried to overturn it.

These wretched specimens dragged screaming from the shit-stained sole of humanity are not following sharia law. They are just cunts. Violent, mindless cunts whose us-and-them mentality is so embarassingly, transparently constructed that they have to wear matching shirts and scarves to identify themselves.

The question is what does such a shallow and contrived manifestation of aggression suggest about a latent potential to violence on this cold wet rock of ours?

Just by way of comparison, I also 'wordclouded' the fascist website Devil's Kitchen.

This is one very angry (and sweary) young fascist!

Yes, I am certainly angry: who could fail to be whilst people like Neil still exist in the world? I genuinely feel sorry for Neil; it must be hard to be such a little tosspot.

Here is one of the most relevent extracts from Wikipedia's entry on Fascism.

Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic. The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizing) the means of production. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or race as superior to the individuals, institutions, or groups composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, often to the point of a cult of personality.

Now, does anyone out there think that this doesn't sound exactly like NuLabour? Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that I rail against constantly and consistently?

And now let us ponder the following question: who is such a devout disciple of the Labour project that he has even included the word "Labour" in his blog title? Whose slavish devotion to the NuLabour project even makes other Labour Party members gag?

Nearly one in two adults in Britain is now receiving at least half their income from the State, a study of Britain's burgeoning public sector shows today.

Forty four per cent of people now work directly or indirectly for the public sector or depend on state benefits for much of their livelihood, according to figures obtained by The Spectator....

The state-dependency research, based on 2005 official figures and broken down by parliamentary constituencies, showed that more than 60 per cent of people work for or live off the State in some of Britain's poorer areas....

The Spectator research, based on data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as well as the Office for National Statistics (ONS), indicates that Labour has increased the overall public sector payroll by 784,000 since 1997.

It isn't just that our immoral government is, in effect, bribing people to vote for them (which must surely be illegal?), but that, economically, it is not sustainable.

The results prompted the Conservatives to warn that Labour's huge expansion of the public sector could undermine economic prosperity.

In a speech today, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, will warn that Labour's prescription of "an ever-rising tax burden, and an ever-growing welfare" state is the "path to decline".

What was that old phrase that we used to use? Oh, yes: "No shit, Sherlock."

Stepping up his attack on Gordon Brown's economic record, he will use a speech in Dublin to say Britain should imitate Ireland's low-tax economy and benefit reforms to boost competitiveness.

At last, a Tory has said something sensible! Hoorah!

Enough with this touchy, feely nonsense. Let's get competitive, competitive, let's get inter-competitive...

UPDATE: The ever-excellent Wat Tyler lays it all out in terms so depressing, a warm bath and a traditional razor would seem like a good solution...

Your humble Devil is—as may have become painfully, and ironically, obvious—an atheist of the most virulent type. Well, I'm not as proselytising as Messers Dawkins or Harding, but generally I do not—cannot—believe in a god of any type, no matter how many times I may take his name in vain in these scribblings. That doesn't mean that I don't yearn to believe that there may be some massive and benevolent power, even if it were the power in the land (as the Celts believed), but, alas, the logic in my head counters the romantic yearning of my heart.

Therefore, I have no real problem with those harmless tyes who do believe, nor those who are driven to do good works by their adherence to their faith. It would, one imagines, be rather churlish to do so.

Your Devil is also awed by the amount of beauty produced by this faith; the awesome cathedrals and churches, the art and, obviously, the hymns. What can be better than belting out Jerusalem or I Vow To Thee My Country under a massive vaulted ceiling, the stained glass windows drenching the congregants in vibrant colours? Or more poignant than the tuneful murmur of Dear Lord And Father Of Mankind swelling to fill those ancient spaces, softly lit in greens and blues?

I therefore find it rather distressing to find that the Church of England continues to fill its spaces with little more than ugliness and abject apologia. Alas, Jerusalem (now absent from the Scottish hymnal owing to its lack mention of "England" only: just another example of the petty, parochial bigotry of the Scots) and I Vow To Thee My Country have fallen out of favour and are now rarely, if ever, sung; their swelling tunes and sense of pride in the achievements of oneself and one's nation rendered unfashionable and, for many in the Church's ruling bodies, positively offensive. Even Dear Lord And Father Of Mankind is sung less, in favour of the utter bilge written by right-on vicars who love nothing better than to collect the royalties from the hymns that they force their browbeaten congregation to sing.

Here is one example of this kind of egregious ditty, one which I recollect from my prep-school days, and which had accompanying actions which I would be happy to demonstrate, and mock, should you ever meet me in the flesh.

My God is so big, so strong and so mightyThere's nothing that he cannot do.

The rivers are his,The mountains are his,The stars are hisHandiwork too,

My God is so big, so strong and so mightyThere's nothing that he cannot do.

No wonder the Church has lost its way. Indeed, even this piece of shit is probably no longer acceptable, as the concept of ownership, even by an omnipotent being, is almost certainly an anathema to the politically-correct shitbags in charge. At least I wouldn't be sad to see the back of that piece of shit.

Indeed, so repulsive are the actions of Church leaders that, even as said atheist, your humble Devil feels a sense of burning shame when he considers what that once great organisation has become.

As I'm not an adherent to any organised religion - finding the manifestations thereof often ludicrous and not infrequently terrifying - it's with some amusement that I regard the current campaign of the Archbishop of Canterbury to present the Church of England in the most ridiculous possible light. Were I an Anglican, I'd most likely be saddened - and even this committed secularist does feel a tinge of pity when considering those who do in fact have a sincere emotional (dare I say 'spiritual'?) attachment to the church.

Well, quite. I know that the bearded git is Welsh, but surely that excuse can only allow him so much latitude...?

I weep for the adults of today, and find no solace in those vast echoing halls where once the spiritual cup of the nation was refilled. Indeed, The Waterboys said it best, in what should become a modern hymn, so beautiful is the tune and apposite the lyrics to The Love That Kills.

Will you take me slowlywill you lead me all the wayWill you sing me your songsuntil I am ready forThe LOVE that killsyeah!

I have known you in thesheets and folds of many lifetimesYou were there when I was madeand I will speak to you in the language of dream untilLove comes my waylove that killsyeah!

Hey I will ride on a dolphin, rain in my face, wind in all of my sailsThere's a shadow hard on my heels now, but I'm still trying to, I'm still trying to...Get to the place, where rolling rivers overspillI have come a long way and I need my cup refilled

So when you come for me slowlywhen you come knocking on my doorWhen the soul singsand the man is stillI will be readyI will be readyYes I will be ready for the love that killsyeah!

The love that killsthe love that kills, Kills, killsthe love that kills

A hymn to reclaim the sinners, and faithful alike, sung by a man who—though, one suspects, is slightly loony—does, at least, understand the power of spirituality in all of its many forms: it is the power to move men to extraordinary feats, and to bring comfort to many.

It is a power that people like Rown Williams—morally bankrupt and sententiously aware of every political trend which should be followed; a man so blinkered that the existance of a deep power is not one which he can grasp; who has continued the trend of debasing and diluting the power of that spiritual power of which he claims to be the driving force—cannot, in fact, even begin to understand.

It is the power of men to be extraordinary: and how could a pedestrian mind like Williams' ever begin to have the slightest inkling of such a concept?

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Hmmm, I have just been watching the footage, on ITV news, of so-called "Happy Slappers"—"people" who commit violence and film it on their mobiles.

Let me make one thing clear right now: this is just not acceptable. These people are so far beyond being utter fucking savages that they should be beyond the law. This means that they should be unprotected by the law.

I propose that these little fucks be beaten to death with their own mobile phones by their victims and their victims' friends and family. In fact, one can imagine that this is all that might deter them. For, of all the attacks found on this particular phone, not one had been reported.

Or, as the ITV reporter said, "no one had nothered to report the incidents to the police". The thing is, you see, that if the police weren't constantly playing politics, making up their quotas with easy-to-catch motorists, attending diversity seminars, setting minimum theft damage levels and reprimanding their officers for making too many arrests then people might bother reporting crimes to them.

Unfortunately, most people's perception of the police—and, frankly, I haven't seen any action from the fuzz to dispel this opinion—is that "the Shit" (as they are known in Newcastle) don't give two fucks about the population that they are supposed to protect.

So, Happy Slappers should be ritually buggered and beaten to death with their own phones, and then the police chiefs are next. They are all cunts, and not even worth the air they breath. Seriously, they should die.

A warm welcome to The Kitchen for Tiny Judas who, though another filthy Leftie, does, nevertheless, write amusing stuff such as this post on Children In Need...

I object to the people. The vile, pampered, patronising celebrities and the shameless, blindly hypocritical bile that they spew out to camera on cue whenever someone points a malnourished Romanian in their direction.

Even more disgusting is when they air drop a black celebrity into Africa, or an Asian celebrity into Pakistan, and they squeal emotionally as if there is some deeper racial connection based on the irrelevant and arbitrary similarity in their pigmentation.

If a generation of freed slaves who returned to Africa, to their 'spiritual home', found the continent a vast alienating unknown, what the flaming fuck does Lenny Henry think he knows about that the place? His blackness doesn't give him any better idea about what its like to walk 10 miles to get water than the ignorant white fucker they would have sent in his place.

TJ feels that, with his current commitments, he cannot keep his own blog going, but I think that he will fit in here nicely...

Prince Charles regards himself as a "dissident working against the prevailing political consensus", who scatters furious letters to ministers on contentious issues and denounces elected leaders of other countries, it was revealed yesterday.

The views and practices of the heir to the throne were detailed in a remarkable witness statement by his former deputy private secretary and spin doctor, Mark Bolland, who claimed the prince routinely meddled in political issues and wrote sometimes in extreme terms to ministers, MPs and others in positions of political power and influence.

Did it occur to him that perhaps, just perhaps, the terrorists might be looking to exploit our society by using morally bankrupt, power hungry, and just plain stupid politicians as a "method of amplifying and transmitting that fear"? Somehow, I doubt it's even crossed his tiny little mind.

I don't really know what I think about Guantanamo; I tend to think that the people there are all horrible Islamonazis, but at the same time I do think that we should afford them some sort of trial. Besides, it makes the US—and, by implication, us—look pretty illiberal.

In other words, I think that they should get a fair trial, but the whole situation doesn't keep me awake at nights. Only rampant women do that...

However, I am a Divine Comedy fan, so I would urge all you liberal types to go and listen, for free, to the Guantanamo track on their myspace... er... space (H/T: Witchibus). Inevitably, being an Irish, Master Hannon links the situation in with the IRA internment policy, which I'd anticipated even before I heard the track.

As Witchy points out, some of the lyrics lack... erm... polish, but the music is as impressive as ever...

Although the main reason I campaign for the release of illegally-imprisoned U.S. Special Forces soldier Jack Idema and his fellow prisoners, Brent Bennett and Ed Caraballo, is to see a gross injustice put right, it really is worth bearing in mind how valuable men like Jack are to our side in the WoT.

A common perception about the fight to rid ourselves of Islamofascism is that the hot-spot right now is Iraq, while hostilities in Afghanistan are, to all intents and purposes, over. Sadly, as the BBC reported yesterday, nothing could be further from the truth:

It is only 200km (125 miles) from Kabul to Khost, but Afghanistan's capital has little control over this rugged border province.Government officials in Kabul say well-armed fighters cross regularly from next-door Pakistan, but admit they can do little to stop them.In remote areas, more than $5,000 (£2,865) in bounty money has been offered to local men to kill senior government workers, one administrator said."It is big money. It is al-Qaeda money and it is from the Gulf," he said, referring to Arab supporters of al-Qaeda.

For anyone paying attention, this is precisely how al-Qaeda infiltrated Afghanistan during the Taliban era, using cash, assassination and foreign fighters to set in place the system that eventually brought about 9/11.

Grasping why history is repeating itself in this way isn't difficult -- All it has taken is for the U.S. State Department to remain stuck in the pre-9/11 mindset of containment and appeasement. Rather than rooting out all the Taliban sympathisers of importance in Afghanistan in 2001, the philosophy that came to govern post-Taliban Afghanistan was, more often than not, one of allowing members of the old regime back into the political life of the country if they agreed to 'renounce violence'.

Now, granted, the idea of peace and reconciliation, of healing divisions after a war draws to an end, is something any reasonable person would desire. Only, here's the problem: we are not dealing with reasonable people. Most of us woke up to that fact on the morning of 9/11, but not, it seems, the U.S. State Department or the Karzai interim government. Both have sought to appease a hard core of Islamofascists with promises of power in exchange for agreements to refrain from violence. What we're beginning to see is just how disastrous a policy this was.

... Though Jack Idema could have told the State Department that back in 2004. We will remember, after all, that Idema and his men were arrested after they captured an 'ex'-Taliban judge, Sidiq, who was in possession of:

The State Department and Karzai interim government reacted to this arrest by handing Idema over to the very terrorist elements he'd been hunting. This was done in a desperate, and desperately misguided, bid to smooth ruffled feathers and keep the 'peace process' on track.

Two years later, we can see the results of this strategy as entire sections of Afghanistan fall back under the control of Islamofascists, and foreign-funded jihadists pour across the border from Pakistan. If this proves anything, it's that Idema and the Northern Alliance's distrust of 'former' terrorists was entirely appropriate. Moreover, as the recent shift in power from Karzai to the Northern Alliance shows, ordinary Afghans, too, want the Taliban's bloody hands removed from the levers of power once and for all.

What did you expect? Did you expect Afghan families to vote for the return of the whip and rod? During their brief time in power, the Taliban denied the people all human rights, abolished music and song, televisions and pictures; even personal pictures. All males had to wear turbans and could not cut their beards—violations were met with beatings and executions. Females had no rights except the right to be stoned in public until dead for even a minor infraction. The Taliban closed all schools and medical centers, and established the Ministry of Good and Evil to enforce their belief system on the entire country; everyone had been whipped at least once. To possess any picture, even a gum wrapper with a cartoon on it, meant you violated Islam, and that required a beating. Fly a kite, go to jail. Trim your beard, go to jail. Let your wife go shopping alone, go to jail. Sports were outlawed so they used the Kabul Soccer Stadium to execute women-- hey, don't waste resources. Oh yeah, the Afghan people were going to vote for these psychos again.

It's high time Idema was released so he can continue working to fulfil the wishes of both the American and Afghan people -- To rout the Taliban and make sure they never get close to political power again.

So what can we do? Well, anyone reading this with their own blog can sign up for the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst by emailing Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details. I'd urge everyone to do this, as we're still terribly short on takers. If you want to know more about the story, Cao's Blog has a large section devoted to Jack Idema. There's also a timeline here, and, of course, a huge amount of information is available over at SuperPatriots, without whose work none of us would have learned about Jack's story.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

A school in London is to scrap its policy of teaching science to Turkish children in their ethnic language.

The new head teacher of White Hart Lane School in Tottenham says the system did little to improve results.

About 400 of the school's pupils speak Turkish and those taking GCSE science had been given bi-lingual lessons.

In The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Edmund falls under the spell of the Witch and this enchantment is reinforced with Turkish Delight; thus, this innocent—and, in my opinion, rather unpleasant (although I did go through a phase of liking it, I must confess)—held a sting in the tale.

As is the case here. The sting, of course, should be perfectly fucking obvious: if you cannot speak English, then you are going to find it pretty fucking difficult to get a job in Britain. This does nobody any favours, least of all the kids who will find themselves unemployable, and therefore spend a lifetime in poverty, their miserable fucking lives funded by handouts (from our taxes) and petty theft, and they will either die an ignominious death or, possibly, feel so "unempowered" that they will explode themselves (and others) on the Underground.

Therefore, it comes as precisely no surprise to find that that dreadful little turd, Stephen Twigg, was to be found initially applauding the initiative.

At the time, the idea was praised by the then education minister Stephen Twigg.

Luckily, the new Head Teacher seems to have some kind of idea of what her job actually is*.

"The children should be proud of their heritage," she told the TES.

"But these are young people growing up in London. We need to prepare them for work and life in London, so when they are in school they should communicate in English."

This measure was introduced in order to try to boost the science exam results; yet another stupid measure—and not just stupid, but actively damaging—was introduced to attempt to meet yet more government targets. How foolish.

* I believe that the acquisition of knowledge is a good thing beyond simply ensuring that the plebs can work; I believe that increased knowledge makes us all better people and, indeed, to an extent defines who we are. Alas, many plebs do not agree...

For those fans of Carnival Of Souls (and I know that there is at least one of you out there), you will no doubt be ecstatic to know that Gronk's solo album, Feared Lost, is now in your humble Devil's possession.

Your Devil is prepping the website and album artwork, and Feared Lost should be available for download within the next week. And believe me, there are some fucking cracking tunes on there, including a song featuring an accordion (which he taught himself to play within two hours, so we hear) and a zither...

Why, in the name of god, would anyone go looking for pictures of slitting wrists? Is it because they have read one too many blog posts putting the boot into that egregious apology for communism that is constituted by Seamus Milne's shameful article?

It may well be, but it doesn't alter the fact that I too—as one of the most irritable loathers of wankers wearing Lenin and Che t-shirts—am going to rip the little snotrag apart. Simply because I loathe communism and The Guardian (and therefore its editor) and the opportunity is just too good to miss and, tardy though I may be, I do feel that I can add something to this debate, i.e. a good deal of Anglo-Saxon.

Communism may be dead, but clearly not dead enough

It's a good headline and, let's face it, a true one. Why do I get an inkling that what follows is not what I would like to see?

The battle over history reflects a determination to prove that no political alternative can challenge the new global capitalism

Oh, yes; because it's the frigging Guardian, that's why.

Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries".

Looking beyond the fact that no one gives two shits about the Council of Europe or their parliamentary assembly, we can see that... Oh, no, sorry: I can't look beyond that fact. Still, if one believes in the political spectrum as a torus, it is difficult to argue against linking Communism with Nazism, or any other fascism. Functionally, they weren't really any different.

Now Göran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Yesterday, declaring himself delighted at the first international condemnation of this "evil ideology", Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.

Yes, yes, fine. How much is this grandstanding by an otherwise insignificant little wanker costing us. You know, these regimes were all deeply unpleasant, but I'd be much happier if Goran just dropped it, y'know? I'm quite happy hating Communism in my own private way; I don't want to be forced to do so on special days.

The ground has been well laid by a determined rewriting of history since the collapse of the Soviet Union that has sought to portray 20thcentury communist leaders as monsters equal to or surpassing Hitler in their depravity - and communism and fascism as the two greatest evils of history's bloodiest era.

Seamus, you are completely correct that this is a bad thing. Communism was far worse than Nazism, if only because:

it has been, and continues to be, responsible for far more deaths and a far greater reign of human misery

it continues to be defended by fucking stupid editors of left-wing wank-mags, and yearned for by stupid academic tossers who have spent their entire lives avoiding actually going out into the real world.

And those are by no means the the only reasons to hate it. As we shall see...

The latest contribution was last year's bestselling biography of Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, keenly endorsed by George Bush and dismissed by China specialists as "bad history" and "misleading".

The latter statement may well confuse some, as one noted China scholar has, in the Guardian's very pages, described the book as "magnificent ... a stupendous work".

In fact, the only bit of sanity that Seamus displays in his whole article is the fact that he obviously doesn't read the paper that he edits, i.e. The Grauniad. Still, never mind, on we stumble...

Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything become more extreme as time has gone on.

Yup, and I think that I know the reason for that. It's because, now that they have joined the EU, we are finally hearing the voices of those poor fuckers who had to live under Communism's tender care. Ever thought about that, Seamus? Apparently not. See, the people who really fucking hate the Commies are the poor bastards who lived under its yoke.

A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained that "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive".

And, of course, with this article, Seamus proves Lindblad to be absolutely on the money. In fact, the entirety of The Grauniad, not to mention the tax policies of The Gobblin' King and his EU buddies, would back up this assertion.

Perhaps the real problem for Lindblad and his rightwing allies in eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough...

Actually, that is a problem for most of us who see it for the piss-poor, evil fucking piece-of-shit regime that it is, Seamus, old chap.

... and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart and buried it at the crossroads at midnight.

Amen.

The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense.

Unless, of course, you have studied any history or politics or, indeed, have any idea of morality beyond equivalence.

Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sobibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions.

No, Seamus, you are quite right; the Communists made use of their Kites, poofs, gyppos, pikeys and spastics by putting them to work, often until they died. And don't forget the millions of Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, etc. etc. who also went to the camps. Oh, and while we're about it, let's not forget the massive pogroms against the Jews either.

Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine.

Although, of course, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pactdid allow Germany to prosecute its war, knowing that the Russians wouldn't attack them. And, naturally, we should remember that it was only when Hitler went as bat-shit mad as Stalin already was, and attacked Russia, that the Pact was broken. Otherwise, Uncle Joe would have been quite happy to watch the subjugation and murder of millions (whilst mopping up a few hundred square miles of territory on the side, no doubt).

Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler.

Seamus, me old mucker, whichever way you slice it, Communism—the regime—has been responsible for ten of millions more deaths than Nazism. Even if you include every fucker killed in WWII, Mao Tse Tung, with an estimated death toll of 70 million, still comes out ahead of Hitler.

As for these famines, they were engineered by the Communist government. Russia, mainly to save face, was exporting millions of tonnes of grain, even when the government knew that the people were starving. That is still murder, whichever way you look at it. Mind you, if Seamus had studied even GCSE history, he would know about this.

For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality.

You are absolutely right, Seamus; the Communists murdered their own people regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation (well, apart from having a penchant for exterminating gays), race (er, well, apart from the Jews. And the Romany peoples), income (well, apart from poor people), social status (yup. Many Party members were also murdered), or beliefs (apart from Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. ad nauseam).

And "rapid industrialisation"? Seamus, me old fruitbat, have you ever read Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets? It sums up the "industrialisation" of the USSR very well; reporters are shown these enormous factories, with impressive bangings and "industrial" sounds emanating from behind their facades. But when Tintin sneaks off, what does he find?

That the factories are exactly that: facades. Cut outs, behind which peasants bang anvils and produce precisely fuck-all. That pretty much sums up the Soviet "rapid industrilisation".

Oh, yeah, that and the Northern convoys of WWII. Do you remember those, Seamus, you know-nothing fuck-wit? You know, when ships were sailing from the US and Britain to Murmansk to deliver armour, ammunition, fuel and supplies to Russia? You know, when thousands of brave men died delivering this stuff to the USSR because its "rapid industrialisation" was a complete fucking sham? Do you remember that, you lackwit buffoon?

It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment...

Yeah, amongst Philby and Co., who found that their "workers' paradise" was not all it was cracked up to be. The people living under it had a whole lot less "genuine idealism" and the "commitment" was forced at the barrel of a gun.

Oh, yeah, and Seamus? You know that Nazi thing? That also "encompassed genuine idealism and commitment". You fucking knob; go read a fucking history book.

Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the west, boosted the anticolonial movement and provided a powerful counterweight to western global domination.

Helped drive up welfare standards, did it? In the West, possibly; certainly not actually in the countries in which it was practised though.

And how did it boost the anti-colonial movement, exactly? By annexing other states in central Asia and Eastern Europe. The biggest anti-colonial movement actually came from the US. You utter, utter wanker.

And—oh my god, but this is the best bit—it provided a "powerful counterweight to western global domination" or, as I prefer to put it, kept millions in poverty and destitution, murdered millions, tortured more and continues to fucking do so, Seamus, you fucking piece of crap.

It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s.

Well, actually, the CoE did condemn colonialism (see Scott for details). And—oh Seamus, Seamus, where did you get your history knowledge?—Zimbabwe didn't gain independence until 1984. Oh, and Seamus, me old mucker, how many of those countries are better off now? Still, I quibble.

And, at this point, I simply can't take any more. Seamus's total lack of any historical fucking clue and his glossing over of the worst excesses of Communism simply make me too angry. The man is an absolute fuckwit.

If you want more, especially on the colonial question, do feel free to visit The Reptile.